A bruised beauty, a cheating husband, and a dead end—did the gumshoe catch a killer, or did he just build the frame?
My on-and-off girlfriend calls me a dinosaur; I take that as a compliment. The head of detectives, Chip Dolan, swears I’m one step from crossing the line, threatening to yank my PI license and drop my name on the DA’s desk. Let him try. I’m slipperier than an eel, with more street smarts than one man has a right to carry.
It started two days ago on a cheap divorce surveillance gig. Money was tighter than a boa’s squeeze, so I took the case of Harold Wainright. My mistake wasn’t taking the job; it was feeling sorry for his wife, Molly. She had an hourglass frame, lips that begged for trouble, and brown eyes that read me like a ten-cent paperback. She rolled up her sleeves to show purple bruises, whispering about Harold’s threats if she dared leave. All she wanted was proof for court so she could take him for half of everything.
I delivered. Glossy eight-by-tens of Harold slipping into a downtown motel with a blonde. Molly took the envelope, pressed her warm hand over mine, and swore she was safe now.
Forty-eight hours later, Dolan called. Molly was dead, strangled in her foyer.
Harold was in lockup, screaming innocence, claiming he was out of town. Dolan figured Harold caught wind of the photos and snapped. It was an open-and-shut murder charge. Case closed.
Then I noticed my office safe was cracked open.
Harold’s surveillance file was gone, but something new sat on my blotter: Harold’s gold signet ring, caked in dried red clay from Molly’s garden, alongside a fresh plane ticket to Mexico in my name.
Sirens wailed in the street below, cutting through the heavy rain. Dolan was coming up the stairs.
The sirens are outside the door, and the evidence points directly at the wrong man—or does it? How does the detective play this hand? Write the ending.